Last Night's TV: AHS: Hotel, Survivor, Empire, and More (SPOILERS!)

VIEW IN BROWSER THIS ISSUE: American Horror Story: Hotel, Survivor, Empire, Blackish, America's Next Top Model TOP MOMENT OF THE NIGHT American Horror Story: Hotel Shows Its Monsters Under the Bed FX BECAUSE: A regular, old-fashioned serial killer is still at large, but at least now we know how Lady Gaga's Countess keeps that youthful, half-dead glow inside the Hotel Cortez: By killing young models and feeding her magic lifeblood back into them, making both parties immortal. Kind of like a vampire, sure, but no average vampire... this is the Mother of Monsters, after all. First rule of Gaga's School for Young Vamps? "Don't get caught, and don't fall in love." READ OUR RECAP Survivor CBS WHAT HAPPENED: What a season! What a show! EW recapper Dalton Ross can barely contain his excitement: "This is season 31, people. SEASON FREAKIN' 31!!! This show should have started sucking years ago. (And I guess, technically, it kinda did if you count Survivor: Thailand.)" But forget about Thailand because this is Second Chances: Abi-Maria still looms at large as the unpredictable, unmanageable, un-look-away-able turnkey of the entire Angkor tribe; the Angkor tribe is still without even the simplest of supplies, turning them all into a starving, crying wreck that just so happens to have to meet with Jeff Probst every three days to metaphorically kill one of their own; and Survivor is still forcing its contestants to put on blindfolds, pick up heavy blocks, and promptly drop them on each other's toes. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING: And the success of Second Chances is no fluke -- these producers and editors know what they're doing. The A.V. Club says, "What's great about Angkor's story in this episode is that it hits all of the beats of a successful tragic arc." Starving and worn down, Angkor returns to their camp with nothing but more despair ahead of the tribe. But then! They're given a chance: a Rewards Challenge, which they of course win thanks to Savage's heroics, giving them the life blood of barbecue and, worse, hope. Because of course one meal wouldn't give them enough strength to win an Immunity Challenge over tribes with hammocks and unlimited seafood and Joe. And so, with another trip to Tribal to send Varner packing, Angkor's arc is complete... until those sneaky producers figure out some way to do this all over again next week. READ OUR RECAP Empire FOX WHAT HAPPENED: The people behind Empire have said that the series is based on King Lear, but on Wednesday night, the writers took another Shakespearean approach: the episode's titular "Poor Yorick" from Hamlet. You know, that rotting court jester whose skull Hamlet unearths in order to get all existential about the decay of his family's, ahem empire. EW recapper Melissa Maerz draws this parallel: "No matter how charming you are, you're gonna end up 6 feet under, your legacy erased by time." The Feds are raiding all Lyons-owned property, but no one is going down without a fight. When the biography writers come for the legacy of the Lyons, they'll find that when backed into a corner, Lucious will put a corpse inside a Federal prosecutor's car, while Cookie will go to prison in order to get her artists' songs on the radio. She will also slap her own ass and declare, "Tell me a grandma that got an ass like this!" WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING: Vulture is spitting truth bombs at Jamal's fictional Rolling Stone cover story: "His album is called The Artist, and it's a manifesto. Come the hell on. That's the most pretentious thing I've ever heard, but it's also perfect for Jamal. Bless his little, shiny, sensitive unicorn heart, and bless the Empire writers for being unable to come up with another album title." Ironically, in its own recap of Wednesday night's episode, the real Rolling Stone took the opportunity to deem this series "neither pretentious nor stupid." Divisive as ever, Empire, along with Jamal's manifesto of a career, trudges on. READ OUR RECAP Black-ish ABC WHAT HAPPENED: In its second season, Black-ish has quietly (and in the bright primary colors of a primetime sitcom) been covering serious social issues with a laugh mixed in about every 10 seconds. It's masterful, really, and Wednesday's episode was no different, taking on the simple topic of Father's Day never getting as much attention as Mother's Day, and infusing it with undertones of the stigma of absent fathers in the black community. Without his father around much as a child, Dre promised himself that one day he would be the type of father worth celebrating, and dammit, he is, so dammit, he wants his Father's Day! Enter Daddy's Day, an ad campaign Dre's firm is working on, with Zendaya as the face -- because "anything that Zendaya touches turns to gold," as EW recapper Justin Kirkland rightly states -- which ultimately fails on a corporate level (this is not "how Jesus must have felt when he invented Christmas"), but Zoey rallies the troops for Dre to get his own personal Daddy's Day. Because he is a great father, and great fathers should be celebrated. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING: Critics everywhere are in awe of the various topics that Black-ish's sophomore season has taken on -- gun control, the N-word, health care and racial inequality -- and how they've been so seamlessly woven into the fabric of the show. The A.V. Club posits that, "Ultimately ... the show doesn't even have to really try to put out a message (at least not a major one), because just by virtue of being a well-written show about a black family, the real life issues of that situation constantly shine true." Remember when we were all up in arms about this series' title? May we never underestimate the writers of Black-ish again. (And may we all celebrate Daddy's Day with breakfast in bed on a tray made of diamonds this year.) READ OUR RECAP One More Thing... But Who Will Find the Models? The CW WANNA BE ON TOP: Get out your handkerchiefs and put on your most smoldering cry-face... after 22 cycles, an estimated 30,000 wigs on Tyra Banks, two networks, and one forever quotable line ("I was rooting for you, WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU!"), it's been announced that America's Next Top Model is calling it quits. As host Tyra Banks said on Twitter, "May your pics be forever fierce." READ OUR RECAP Also Check Out... Recommended by Copyright © 2015 Entertainment Weekly and Time Inc. All rights reserved. WANT MORE? To subscribe to any of EW.com's email products, please click here. PRIVACY POLICY Please click here for our privacy policy. For further communication, please click here Your California Privacy Rights Entertainment Weekly Customer Service ATTENTION: CONSUMER AFFAIRS 3000 University Center Drive Tampa, FL 33612-6408 You are receiving this email because you are a friend of Entertainment Weekly. To unsubscribe from these updates, please click here.